GRAND COULEE, Wash.--I've got a jetpack on and I'm flying around, over, under and inside the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest power generator in the United States and the largest concrete construction in the country's history.

OK, I'm not literally flying around. It's all virtual--a self-controlled digital fly-around of the dam and its various component parts that's a feature of the dam's visitor center. But for a few seconds there, I swear I could almost feel the wind in my hair.

The Grand Coulee Dam, which harnesses the immense power of the Columbia River to provide power to millions of Pacific Northwesterners and irrigates hundreds of thousands of acres of previously arid land, is truly a sight to behold.

We're not talking any puny Hoover Dam type of construction here. This is a project that contains enough concrete, or so a friendly recorded female voice in the visitor center informs me, to build a highway across the entire United States.

And as a power generator, the dam--which holds back waters from Lake Roosevelt reservoir and cycles it through three power plants--produces 20 billion kilowatt hours a year worth $950 million.

By itself, the dam's third, and most powerful, generator--which was completed in 1980, decades after the dam's 1942 opening--produces more than 60 percent of its energy output, enough to power Seattle and Portland, Ore.

But this may be the most awesome thing I've seen, and not just because of what it can do. It is simply so big--a mile across and taller than the great Pyramid of Egypt--that it boggles the mind.

The virtual fly-over is not the only technology used to tell the story of the dam. In fact, on Sunday night, before I was able to see the dam in daylight, I arrived in front of the visitor center for the nightly 10 p.m. laser light show that's projected directly onto the monstrous public-works project.

As about 200 spectators sat on concrete bleachers outside the visitor center, a booming voice materialized, along with some cheesy 1980s-era electronic music, as the laser show began flashing across the entire mile-long face of the dam.

"Out of chaos, I was born," the voice shouted. "I am power. I am strength. I am the River Columbia. I am life."

Indeed, the story that accompanies the laser show that tells the dam's history is from the perspective of the Columbia River, the third-largest river in the U.S.

The story begins with a brief history of the river and the Indian tribes whose lifeblood it provided.

"With the greatest respect," the voice boomed," they named me the 'Big River.'"

But as local communities began to depend on the river for the irrigation of crops on otherwise arid lands, they quickly discovered that unnaturally high levels had been born of irregular heavy rains. And when the Great Depression began, the lack of rain and lower water levels threatened local agriculture.

To my mind, the costs and drawbacks of a massive project such as the Grand Coulee Dam are far outweighed by the benefits. It is sad to me that Americans suffer diminishing vision where projects that stand among the wonders of the world no longer seem possible. We have forgotten how to dream of greatness. Hopefully by focusing on successes such as the Grand Coulee, that vision will once again be rekindled.

The lack of quality writers on this site and the increase of more non tech articles lead me to believe that news.com does not care about the quality or the material they produce. Instead they are only interested in page views for their advertisers.

Let's see, according to the environmentalists, we can't build dams to generate electricity, we can't burn coal or oil, we can't use wind power (windmill farms interfere with migratory birds, and they would spoil Ted Kennedy's view of the ocean from Martha's Vineyard), we can't use solar (engineers calculate millions of acres of solar panels needed for even a small city.) Of course ANY form of nuclear power is completely out of the question. So what would the wacko's have us do as a society? Why, isn't it obvious? We simply return to our hunter/gatherer roots and begin dismantling our cities. We eschew technology in favor of an organic existence and we all live happily, singing while we gather tonight's meal from the collective farm.

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